Will An Agent Accept A Self-Published Book?

I Joe Bob.

That essay changed how I look at writing. It's my litmus test. The people who *get* it are writers and often friends for life.

Gillhoughly said:

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D) Courier or Times New Roman are equally welcome as fonts. I prefer reading and writing in TNR.
D) The fact the book was up on CreateSpace means the first publication rights to THAT BOOK are gone forever.
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Times or Courier are not equally acceptable to everyone. When you have to edit by hand, many do like Times fine, but many others consider Times an absolute pain in the ass. I'm one of those. I won't edit Times without a gun being pointed at my head. I know other editors who feel the same way.

We'll edit when we have to, but we sure as hell don't like it, and do not find both fonts equally acceptable.

Nothing is more unimportant than first rights with a novel of this type. Either a publisher wants it or they don't, and it'll be handled exactly the same way as any otehr novel, including all the self-pubbed novels that have gone to mainstream publishers. It's simply bought and pubished.

In this case, I doubt if first rights would be gone, even if they did matter. But they don't.

Gillhoughly said:

I Joe Bob.

That essay changed how I look at writing. It's my litmus test. The people who *get* it are writers and often friends for life.

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I'm not pretentious/cocky/arrogant/thesaurus-word to claim I *get* it (unpublished, unagented bum I know I am) but I can at least claim to be able to read it

Jamesaritchie said:

Times or Courier are not equally acceptable to everyone.

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Use any font you like when you're working on the MS. That's up to the writer.

But for the submission copy use TNR or Courier. Some publisher guidelines specify them, even mentioning the size. It hints that some writers, wanting to squeeze as much into their 50 pages as possible, used a mini font!



I dislike Courier; it reminds me of the bad ol' days before I traded my typewriter for a word processor.

When I get in an e-copy of any work in Courier, I globally change it to TNR until I'm ready to send it back to the writer.

When you say write ten "stories," do you mean stories or novels? Novels, as in more-than-75,000 words each? Again, I'm trying to figure out the word counts you're using.

Jamesaritchie said:

Times or Courier are not equally acceptable to everyone. When you have to edit by hand, many do like Times fine, but many others consider Times an absolute pain in the ass. I'm one of those. I won't edit Times without a gun being pointed at my head. I know other editors who feel the same way.

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James, I prefer a seriffed font because those little serifs seem to anchor the words onto the page: I have vision problems, and without them I sometimes struggle to read text, particularly on-screen. And I know of several agents and publishers who specify TNR as their font-of-choice for submissions.

I can understand that you don't like it: but that doesn't make it unacceptable throughout the whole of the publishing world.It just makes it unacceptable to you.

Nothing is more unimportant than first rights with a novel of this type. Either a publisher wants it or they don't, and it'll be handled exactly the same way as any otehr novel, including all the self-pubbed novels that have gone to mainstream publishers. It's simply bought and pubished.

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That's not true, I'm afraid. There are quite a few publishers out there which won't even consider a book if it's already been published in their territory. Some will: more publishers are opening up to the possibility now. But still, if a book has been previously self-published this can be a stumbling-block. It isn't always, but it can.

In this case, I doubt if first rights would be gone, even if they did matter. But they don't.

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This, I'm afraid, is just nonsensical. As with so many other things, there can only be one first time for books. They can't be published a first time more than once. So the instant you self-publish your book, its first rights are gone forever. And yes, to some publishers, that matters a whole lot.

MagaliFuentes said:

I will not query any of my manuscripts until I have at least ten more finished manuscripts. Thank you everyone.

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wHAT?

Ugh. I'm out.

oooooh. I am so going to get my brother to make me an 'I Joe Bob' teeshirt.

As for the rest of this thread, I really can't be annoyed with the drama. So I am bowing out.

MagaliFuentes said:

Hi. I am talking about ten novels. I don't write short stories anymore. Yes, my novels range from 80,000 to 90,000 words, but I try my hardest not to make it larger than 90,000 words. Oh, and I am using my word-processor word counts, Microsoft Office Word 2007.

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I thought you said all your novels were over 200k each so.............ah screw it.

Ignore button come hither.

Are you writing stories from beginning to end or are you just sitting down and typing a tale and when you get to a certain word count you say you are "finished". A story has to have subplots and backstory, a beginning, a middle, and a very neatly tied up ending that won't leave the reader going "Huh?"

Don't write to a word count, write a story and then find out how long your story is.
Then take a nice red pen and make it bleed
Keep writing it til its tight and right.

Publishers want a flawless story, the rest is really just pretty wrapping paper and ribbon.

MagaliFuentes said:

If you are going to ignore my posts and this thread, why did you bother replying to it again?

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No offence meant, but your current posts don't match what you said in the previous posts.

Enough of the sniping. Everyone just let it go.

Gillhoughly said:

I dislike Courier; it reminds me of the bad ol' days before I traded my typewriter for a word processor.

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^ This. Quoted for absolute friggin' truth.

Okay, confession time: when I nine years old I was struck by a car. I nearly lost my right leg, and suffered a brain injury which left me dyslexic (that hasn't stopped me from being commercially published, but sure hasn't helped either).

When I was sixteen my parents begged and cajoled and chivvied me into taking a typing class ("it'll help you later in life!"), forgetting , of course, that dyslexics make crappy typists.

My fears proved true. The instructor was a shrew, the class a nightmare, and in general I felt a bit like Lenny in Of Mice and Men. At the end I got a pity grade of D-, and ever since then when I see Courier I hear that harridan's shrill voice sounding like a klaxon in my head: "Raise your wrists! Go faster! Don't look at your hands, look at the text!!"

I hate Courier because it is the font of screenwriting. The thousand-plus awful screenplays I have read over the years make my eyeballs bleed when I see Courier. It is the Font of Crap.

Why is it necessary to have 10 novels finished before you query the first one? That totally confused me. And also, how fast do you write?! 10 novels? Really? I have trouble finishing one!

Count me in as another who hates Courier. I like TNR or Book Antiqua.

I also don't get why you want ten mss finished before querying one. It's probably more advantageous to write and polish one, and while that's out on submission, work on the next. Lather, rinse, repeat. Just my $0.02.